Bushfire information for Australia

During bushfire season keep up-to-date with the latest warnings and information about bushfires through the information page relevant to your State below.  The websites have information on how to assess your risk, how to plan and prepare, and how to get information about the latest updates and warnings.

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How Eurovision increases my Cultural Intelligence

Last weekend we enjoyed watching the Eurovision Song Contest.  It was a Eurovision  (EV) Party. We sang along, we danced, we laughed with some competitors, shouted when the ones we liked didn’t get the points we felt they deserved, and ate and drank in Australian/ European party style.  Like many Australians we enjoy the crazy, cheesy, festival of song and each year learn a little more about the countries that host and compete.

It is a perfect vehicle for increasing all four factors of cultural intelligence (CQ). 

The CQ Drive component is about motivation and confidence;

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It doesn’t have to be a lonely planet - Global networking skills

So you’ve moved overseas.  You need to build relationships.  Work relationships and social relationships. There may be barriers of language and culture; there will be barriers of unfamiliarity.  Unless you have connections that know and trust you –you will be seen as a newcomer, an outsider. 

How can you bridge that gap to effectively build relationships?

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Do expat partners need high cultural intelligence?

In all the work I do I am consistently espousing the importance of high cultural intelligence for successful expat performance.  Another thing I have a tendency to rave on about is the critical role of the partner (spouse) in a successful transition; in ensuring the assignment is completed and in ensuring the expat employee is working effectively.   In research terms, partner satisfaction mediates the outcomes for all of these variables.   

So it was really interesting to me to meet a researcher who was looking at expat spouses in China and the impact of CQ levels on their satisfaction.   (Regula and I met during a Cultural Intelligence Facilitator Certification course with David Livermore in Hong Kong and enjoyed a number of nerdy discussions about CQ and what her research is showing)    So what were the results?  I’ll let her tell you below…

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Gifts across cultures

From a cultural perspective gifts can be a challenging issue. I was laughing with some colleagues recently about my embarrassing faux pas, years ago in China, asking the shop assistant to wrap a wedding gift in white paper. Very appropriate in Australia, but very inappropriate in China where the colour white is traditionally associated more with death and mourning. My colleagues had similar stories about their experiences in China of almost giving inappropriate gifts such as a clock and a set of knives.

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